The photos above are a xantu murrelet from Wiki, a yellow tit taken by John and Fish, a kea parrot, taken by Sid Mosdell, a marine iguana taken by Vince Smith, a pom pom crab taken by Hechtonicus, and a numbat taken by S J Bennet! Thank you to all animal photographers who so generously give their work on creative commons and those scientists that allowed me to show private pictures.

I found lots of interesting blogs and commented on more this year than I have in any year – mainly due to having written all my posts in the first week of the challenge and scheduling them. I did at least three a day, which was a challenge, when I had to research, write the facts about each animal, find an excellent photo of it and ask permission for its use, and write a poem! Just a couple..actually maybe just one poem was prewritten this year.

So with all that visiting, my A-Z Blog linky page was a sea of blue!

I found so many broken links – I presume these were because people had dropped out or not kept up, or were businesses. It was quite a waste of time clicking and finding just a broken link message – I wonder if the links could just be removed entirely next year?

Maybe a rule that any website or blog for a business can’t join the challenge at all?

You learn a lot from different blogging styles. it’s wonderful seeing how very different they all are.

One thing I would really love – the badges are wonderful (thank you Jeremy @Hollywood Nuts) but I would like an A-Z Challenge survivor badge the same dimensions as the first years I did it – the new ones are too long. If you did it for 10 years your whole sidebar would be taken up with A-Z badges. I like to keep mine neat, and I like them all to be the same. So last year and this year I have made my own.

Apart from that, great fun – I can’t imagine how much work it must be if you have more than one blog, or are helping run the whole shebang!

Goodbye A-Z until next year!

I’m off on a poetry retreat for a few days now, so will reply to replies when I get back!

I was also frustrated to encounter so many links to non-participating blogs, broken links, and private blogs. Why would you bother signing up if you haven’t posted anything in several years? I also hate finding a blog whose theme (or part of the theme) is promoting an MLM. I’m cool with using a theme related to one’s books, artwork, small business, etc., but not with outright promoting a legalized pyramid scheme’s products.

Hello, Carrie-Anne! Sorry for the late reply, I’ve been away at a retreat. There did seem to be many more businesses posting for the publicity with no intention of taking part this year. I don’t know how they are going to police that – I think they’ll just need to ban all company websites.

I agree so many clicks to dead links… it was was more this year than years past… though I am glad you found some great new ones… We made it…Hope you had a great time, thank you for your Reflection!
Jeremy [Retro]
AtoZ Challenge Co-Host [2016]

T-SHIRTS, MUGS, FREE MAGAZINE… OH MY!

HOLLYWOOD NUTS!
Come Visit: You know you want to know if me or Hollywood… is Nuts?

Hello random musings, thank you, I didn’t take the photos I’m afraid, I look for them and choose the best to illustrate my poem. I do take a lot of trouble over this. Sorry this reply is late, I was off on a poetry retreat!

Congrats on completing your fifth challenge! That is quite the accomplishment 🙂 I’m sad that I only found your blog at the end as it would have been so nice to have the information and your poems doled out daily to spread the happiness over the course of the month 🙂

Like you I found many links that signed up but never showed up or were behind, or something. I hope, like you, they can find a way to “fix that.” by updating the list. It is a great experience. This was my 4th year and I keep learning. I hope you have time to read my reflection. Let me know if you agree with some of my thoughts. Cheers.

OMG with the business posts. I SO agree! “The A to Z of Why You Should Buy My Yoga Mat.” That sort of thing. I’m afraid if they don’t set some boundaries, it’s only going to get worse until it’s just a huge ball of spam. It took me a lot of clicking to find one that had actual content I could read!